THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

386 THE GOD-MANman' is the gift of Christ, the divine man, when the 'old man' has been surrendered; how this gift is made andthe 'unselfing' accomplished accounts for the differences between the Christian churches.The differences between religions amount to precisely the same thing, how the unselfing takes place. Inevery religion salvation is a matter of 'awakening', a breaking into a new consciousness, a kind of knowingbeyond rational understanding. In Buddhism this is by individual effort; in Christianity it is through the workof Christ, the mediator. This word 'mediator' is worth looking at: it does not mean one who stands betweenthe individual and God, but one through whom grace is given, as a physician mediates healing through hissub-consciousness to his patients in the course of his clinical practice. The sleeping self, captive in sinthrough disobedience, held fast in natural life, has mediated to it through Christ's sacrifice the grace of God.In the Christian Church this is effected through the sacraments. In Islam there is reliance upon the Prophet.In Hinduism there is need for a guru, in Zen too. And Baba is explicit that without grace nothing is possible.Baba's own life shows his original dependence upon his Masters, and the foregoing record makes plain hiscontinual dependence upon God. We should clearly understand that Baba does point to God, not to what maybe regarded as 'apotheosized man', for he does not 'deify' the natural man, in the Western humanist sense, butmakes it very clear as the twelfth-century Sufi mystic, Attar, said, that the natural man must be covered 'withthe garment of nothingness and drink the cup of annihilation'.(6)This element of nothingness is the sign of perfection by which the Perfect Master is known, not by anydisplay of powers. The remarkable affirmation of the Muslim al Hallaj to which I have referred deserves tobe considered in this connection. Al Hallaj did not say 'I am a God', which, indeed, would be a sign ofmadness. What he says is entirely different. As Rumi pointed out, had he said 'I am the slave of God 'itwould, indeed, have been 'a presumptuous claim' affirming 'two existencies, his own and God's'. Instead, bysaying, 'I am God' he 'made himself non-existent and has given himself up'. 1 He was not elevating himself.So with Baba. When Baba as Perfect Master declares his divinity he does not say 'Bow down to me as a God,serve me as1 Cf. Rumi; Poet and Mystic: 'Deification', p.184. tr. R. A. Nicholson (Allen & Unwin, 1950).